No believer in Jesus Christ has any excuse for being naïve and ignorant!

We have all these past few days been caught up in a wave of emotions and grief over the terrorist activities in Boston. Certainly we are concerned with all the victims and their families and should be praying for God’s comfort and healing for them.

That said, there is one other point to be made. Several times I have heard persons – newsmen and even a major political figure – say something like, “what kind of people would do something like this?”

What a naïve question. Haven’t we all lived through many years now of terrorist attacks in the US and other countries, attacks by people who clearly do not care about human life, who are following some tortured belief in other purposes and causes they value more? The original World Trade Center bombing in the early 1990’s, the US Cole attack, the huge 9/11 attack in New York City, the attack on the rail system in Spain, the attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the recent killing of the US ambassador and others in Libya, and on and on. In certain areas of the world the terrorist attacks are steady and ongoing – especially parts of the Middle East. So how can anyone who has been alive and lived ask such a naïve question?

Now turn to people who are true Christians, who know and believe in Jesus, who have been born of water and the spirit. Not only do such people have faith in Jesus and know the Bible is true; they also know the devil is real. They know that evil is real. They know that evil people are out there. Not a few evil people. More than that.

We are living in the last of the last days. The Bible points out how people will fall away from God as we near the return of Jesus (II Thessalonians 2:3). It also points out something very clear: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 Timothy 3 goes on to expound on this. We can readily identify with this right now. And don’t forget how Jesus warned of wars and rumors of wars. We are in the midst of a war – not just the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, but a bigger war. Not just a war of radical Islam extremists against others, but a bigger war. We are in the midst of the playing out of the war of good versus evil. It has been going on for thousands of years, and it is moving steadily to a conclusion.

You and I live in this difficult age and place. While certainly there will still be persons coming to know the Lord in various parts of the world, there will also be all sorts of terrible things going on at the same time. We are told all this will happen. And hopefully all of us will be here to be called by the Lord when he soon comes in the clouds.

We - if we are true believers of Jesus – have no right to be ignorant of what is happening. We certainly can be horrified and saddened, but we have no right to be surprised by the overall direction of world society. We are living in the end of this age. The Lord has given us much to protect ourselves, and we should always pray for protection for our families and friends, for ourselves. We can put on God’s armor every day as Paul describes in Ephesians 6, and we can in Jesus‘ name take authority over evil and over situations. In Jesus’ name we can order demons away from us and from our households.

But we cannot be naïve. And in the end, we do have to realize that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. These are difficult times in which we live. The wheat and the tares grow together.

Lastly, the Bible points out how the devil has blinded the minds of unbelievers. So we can understand how unbelievers cannot see what is happening.

But you can. And you should.

In all things,

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus!

                                                                                                                                                 (April 2013)

                                                                                                                 Copyright © 2013 by John Newlin

 

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FAITH IN GOD

One thing you must have as you follow God is faith. 

·         God is who he says he is.

·         He will do what he says he will do.

·         And…you will never understand everything.

Consider Job.  Did he suffer in order to be refined?  To be perfected?  To grow as a believer?

Or did he suffer as some form of punishment?

If not, why then? 

If you’ve read Job, you know.  All those sufferings came about through some sort of a challenge by satan to God.  As a result of the challenge, God – who clearly has a high regard of Job - gives satan the right to do virtually everything to Job except kill him. 

But Job never knows this, never learns this, even at the end of the book when God speaks with Job.

Maybe a personal example would be valuable.  About four years ago, suddenly I had a really violent physical attack.  Acute pain.  I wasn’t so sure I could move, or endure.  Cathy called several prayer warriors to pray and a couple rushed over to help.  Needless to say I was calling on God and on scriptures, that is, when I could think.  Pain can block thinking and prayer sometimes.  I was weak for several weeks. 

So about two or three months after all this, I was standing in the kitchen after reading the Bible and praying for a couple hours.  I was suddenly aware of the presence of the Lord right across the counter that separates our kitchen from the dining area.  And Jesus spoke to me – “I’m never going to lose you, John.”  Tears filled my eyes.  And I said, “What did I do wrong?”

And the answer came back:  “Nothing.”

So I had done nothing wrong.  I can still speculate about that horrible period and what happened, but that is all it is – speculation.

Let’s take this lesson to you specifically.  God may never answer your requests precisely as you think you would like, or give clear reasons for why things happen.   He will most certainly answer, as we are promised in scripture.  But the answer will be God’s answer.  And he no doubt knows far better than we what we should have asked.

We have to have faith.  We have to trust him!

Romans 8:28 gives us the reason we can trust – “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Most assuredly we can trust God and live in the peace that comes from Romans 8:28, for look at what Jesus endured for us in coming to the earth and in going to and through the cross.

While we should always seek to grow in knowledge and revelation of God and scripture and to live in the fullness of who we are in Jesus Christ, we will never understand everything.  We can work and struggle to know and understand a great deal, but everything?  No. 

God, after all, is God.

Copyright © 2013 by John Newlin